Power Downloader's strange software solution

When Kitty Kilobyte demands a unique piece of software for her next year at college, Power Downloader's software skills are put to the test.

Power Downloader has been around long enough to know that young people tend to go through phases in their lives. Particularly in college, when young people are trying to figure out what path they want to take and what kind of individual they want to be, a certain degree of experimentation is expected. When Power's niece, Kitty Kilobyte, recently stated in an e-mail that she would no longer use any software from a huge corporation, Power smiled knowingly to himself and continued to read on. Kitty said one of the programs she needed was a full-featured word processor for her next year at school, but it had to be unique like she is--a program unlike what everybody uses at school.

In Power Downloader's many trips through the Download.com software library, he's found plenty of unique software apps; from the strange and wonderful to the just plain weird. But it wasn't enough to just grab the weirdest word processor available for Kitty; he had to find one that was both unique and useful.

After a long search on Download.com, Power Downloader found and downloaded Jarte. With this colorful word processor, Kitty would never have to worry about looking like she was writing her essays in a program everyone else has. The strange button layout of Jarte paired with the oddly colored interface might even turn a few heads at the dorms. But even with its strange interface, Power noticed that it had all the features a word processor should have, including a font manager, document layout options, spelling tools, find and replace features, and formatting tools. It even had buttons so she could search words and topics in a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia. Power Downloader decided that it may look strange compared to apps like Microsoft Word, but it had some unique options that would be useful to anyone.

When Kitty Kilobyte replied to Power Downloader the next day, she said she thought Jarte was perfect. At first she thought it was too weird, but, just like Power, soon realized it was a great free program. Though Power Downloader usually only downloads the most practical software, he also knows that sometimes you can't judge a download by its interface.

Jason Parker has been at CNET for more than 13 years. He is the Senior Editor in charge iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.